


侘寂

by thisisthefamilybusiness



Series: きんつくろい [1]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Robots & Androids, Alternate Universe - Role Reversal, Amputation, Angst, Blood and Gore, Body Horror, Cyberninja Hanzo Shimada, Cyborg Hanzo Shimada, Cyborgs, Gen, Gore, Happy Ending, Medical Experimentation, Medical Trauma, Robot Philosophy, if you consider 'Dragons' to be a happy ending for the Shimadas
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-28
Updated: 2017-05-28
Packaged: 2018-11-05 19:00:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11019588
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thisisthefamilybusiness/pseuds/thisisthefamilybusiness
Summary: “What do you mean that the intelligence is wrong?” Jack shouts, slamming his fist down onto the conference table.“I mean that it’s wrong, Jack.” Gabriel collapses into a chair around the massive circular table with a sigh. “It’s wrong. Hanzo Shimada isn’t the one the oyabun want to take over. It’s Genji.”“That’s bullshit.” Jack picks up one of the manila folders from the table just to crumple it in anger. He vaguely hopes it wasn’t an important dossier, but frankly, he doesn’t care. “Hanzo Shimada was the chosen one—that’s what your source said. Why would they change their mind now?”(Fill for a prompt on overwatch_kink that asked for a different outcome on the Genji-Hanzo fight in canon based on Hanzo's new Cyberninja skin.)





	侘寂

**Author's Note:**

> The gore here is on the NBC Hannibal levels of gore. It's present, and pretty critical to the story, but it's not gonna make anyone puke (I don't think). 
> 
> The title (侘寂, wabi-sabi) is a Japanese aesthetic philosophy that's based on the embracing of emptiness and imperfection (or that's my understanding of it, based on what I studied about it in art history a while back). Wabi-sabi is not finding beauty in flaws, but rather accepting that flaws are beautiful and inherently part of life. 
> 
> Also, do we have an actual answer as to if Hanamura is a Shinto shrine or a Buddhist temple? I've heard both used, and to me it looks very much like a shrine (especially considering that Genji and Hanzo both rely on the Shinto kami mythology), but the map says it's a temple. I'm neither Shinto nor Buddhist, so if someone with more knowledge here could give me their two cents it'd be appreciated.

“What do you mean that the intelligence is wrong?” Jack shouts, slamming his fist down onto the conference table. The pain is barely a distraction.

“I mean that it’s wrong, Jack.” Gabriel collapses into a chair around the massive circular table with a sigh. “It’s fucking wrong. Hanzo Shimada isn’t the one the _oyabun_ want to take over. It’s Genji.”

“That’s bullshit.” Jack picks up one of the manila folders from the table just to crumple it in anger. He vaguely hopes it wasn’t an important dossier, but frankly, he doesn’t give a shit. “Hanzo Shimada was the chosen one—that’s what your source said. Why would they change their mind now?”

Gabriel shrugs as he clasps his hands behind his neck, lolling his head. He looks infuriatingly calm for someone who just admitted to having wrong intelligence. “You know everything I know, Jackie. The sources say what the sources say and I don’t have any reason to doubt them. Now, you want the worse news?”

“What, that wasn’t the bad news?” Jack is furious, his entire face gone red with anger. “Your source giving us bad information was the _good_ news?” He flings the crumpled file across the room.         

“Seems a few members of the Shimada-gumi aren’t too happy with the switch. They’re gonna fight,” Gabriel says grimly, “To the death.”

“Are you fucking kidding me, Gabe?”

“Blackwatch doesn’t have the resources to deal with this. Whatever happens, whoever wins—you’re gonna want a full strike team in Hanamura to clean up afterwards. Touch them down in Tokyo and say it’s a routine check on the Izanami program containment to cover your ass if you have to.”

Jack clenches and unclenches his jaw a few times, grinding his teeth. Being angry at Gabriel will solve nothing, and refusing solid information was just stupid. “Fine,” he finally grits out. “But if this is a bad trail, I’m not taking the fall for it, understand?”

Gabriel laughs. “Of course not, golden boy.”

* * *

 

Angela had always had a strong stomach, even for the most violent scenes of carnage. It made her very good at her job, she liked to believe.

But the scene that greets the strike team when they finally enter the Hanamura shrine is so gruesome that it even she has to look away for a moment so she can gather her composure. She snaps on her gloves and steels herself.

The entire shrine has been torn apart, arrows and shuriken dotted along every surface, scrolls ripped, blood spattered onto the walls and in long winding trails on the floor. What is left of Hanzo Shimada lies against an altar, propped up in a sticky pool of his own bile and blood.

His jaw has been torn completely out of place, leaving his soft palate and his upper teeth exposed while bone pokes through the remnants of what was once his chin. A shuriken is embedded in his left cheek, but his upper face and the rest of his head seem completely fine, though Angela is unwilling to consider it a victory when Shimada’s body is hardly recognizable as human.

Angela is not sure how Shimada could possibly be alive, but when she hesitantly checks scans for vital signs there’s still a cardiac rhythm—a very weak one, albeit, but it’s still present. She drops a biotic field and immediately has her assistants helping her gently arrange Shimada into a better position so she can survey the damage.

Angela thinks it would be more merciful to simply let Hanzo pass on, looking at his body, but she has her orders. She must do what she can to save him, no matter the cost, Jack had said.

Saving Hanzo Shimada will not be an easy, cheap exercise. She had helped engineer prosthetic limbs and organs before, but this—Shimada’s limbs couldn’t be moved until they’d been set in splints, for god’s sake, and Angela had no idea what she could do get Shimada’s lower jaw protected until they were in an OR—but this was going to require an almost entirely prosthetic body. Shimada would be more machine than man when it was over.

One of her assistants nudges Angela gently out of her mindless work. “Ma’am, Strike-Commander Morrison wants to know if you can do this,” he asks quietly.

Angela bites her lip and stares at the ruins of Shimada’s body. “Yes,” she says confidently, straightening her posture. “I’ll need a local OR prepped immediately so we can get him stable. Transport to Zürich will be needed ASAP when we’re done.”

The assistant nods. “Right away, Dr. Ziegler.”

Angela throws down another biotic field and starts her work for real.

* * *

It takes five hours before Jack sees Angela emerge from the OR in Hanamura, the borrowed hospital scrubs spattered with blood. She looks frazzled, exhausted in a way Jack has never seen her before.

“How’s he looking?” Jack asks, shifting in his seat in the tiny waiting room.

Angela sighs and all but collapses into the chair next to him. She closes her eyes for a moment, breathing deeply. “Bad, Jack.”

“What’s that mean?” He tries to school himself into sound sympathetic and caring, and falls mostly flat, but Angela doesn’t seem bothered.

“I don’t know if I can salvage him.”

“You told me you could, Angela.” And there it goes, Jack can feel himself getting angry again, helpless to do anything. This was not a cheap or easy mission, and lately it seems all Overwatch did was take nosedives in front of the UN council.

“And I thought I could. When you said there was going to be a fight— _Te tcheu_ , Jack, I was expecting bullet wounds, I was expecting lacerations, at worst damage from an explosion.” Angela rubs at her eyes. “I was expecting a human. You gave me a pile of flesh. I’m not a miracle worker. I’ve got him stable, but I can’t promise more than that.”

There are black smudges under Angela’s eyes, makeup that ran mixed with obvious fatigue. She looks so much older than Jack knows she is. Jack, for a moment, feels a little guilty for putting this much pressure on her. She was young enough to be his daughter, for Christ’s sake. She was barely more than a kid, for all her accolades.

“What do you need?” Jack asks quietly, settling a hand on her shoulder in what he hopes is a comforting gesture.

“Sleep,” she sighs. “He’s stable on life support now. Once we get him back to HQ I’ll talk to Torbjörn and see what we can engineer. He needs an entirely new body, for all intents and purposes.”

Jack nods and pulls away, scrubbing a hand down his face. “Go get some rest. We’ll leave at 0700 hours CEST.”

* * *

There is white-hot pain running throughout Hanzo’s entire body, but when he tries to scream, he can’t open his jaw. He can’t do anything, he realizes with dawning horror; he can only lie in the all-consuming darkness, the stifling silence.

He remembers Genji.

He remembers the humiliation, the cold night air, the disgust on his father’s face as Genji landed blow after blow and Hanzo could do nothing but endure it. A disgrace to the Shimada name, his father had said, towering over where Hanzo had collapsed against the shrine altar, and Genji’s silence was somehow cruller than if he’d simply agreed with their father.

Genji had kept telling him to pick up his bow, to fight back. To resist. But how could Hanzo do that? They were brothers. They’d done everything together as children. They had been inseparable. How could he do this?

How could Genji listen to the council when they were making such ridiculous accusations? Of course Hanzo had never spoken to any Overwatch agents. Hanzo had dedicated his entire life to their family. He had sacrificed his own dreams and desires in favor of what best fit the needs of the Shimada-gumi.

“Fight back,” Genji kept hissing at him, intentionally aiming his shuriken over Hanzo’s shoulder, eyes wet. “Fight back, you fucking coward.”

But how could Hanzo do that? There were only two possible outcomes to this fight, and both ended up with one of them left for dead in the Hanamura shrine. How could Hanzo live with his brother’s blood on his hands?

Hanzo’s last memory was of Genji leaning over him with his sword, expression pained, as their father told him to make sure nobody would recognize Hanzo as a Shimada, so his death didn’t bring any more dishonor to their name.

Floating in this darkness, the only thing Hanzo can think of is that final moment. Of Genji breathing what might have been an apology or an agreement with their father, before slicing into his cheek just as Hanzo was no longer able to stay awake.

His current pain is eased by occasionally unconsciousness, but those moments are becoming less and less common as time goes on. Hanzo wonders if this is death—nothing but agony, repeated again and again while all he can imagine is his brother—if this is the price of dishonor, of making Genji into a murderer.

But more and more, Hanzo is beginning to suspect he is not dead, after all. That this agony, this perpetual darkness he’s been trapped in—this is his life.

It terrifies him worse than the notion that this might be his death.

* * *

Angela peels the gauze away from Hanzo’s eyes gently. If this has all worked—and Angela hopes to god that it does, because the UN council arrives tomorrow and Jack has run out of excuses for why they can’t see what they spent half a million American dollars on—Hanzo will be fully operational in a matter of hours. Not ready for the field by a long shot, but conscious and able to talk, maybe display basic motor skills.

“Everything’s good on my end,” Torbjörn says, huffing.

“Can you hear me?” Angela asks. Her hands are shaking as she shines a pen light in Shimada’s eyes. The translator repeats what she said in Japanese. They dilate properly, and Shimada startles like he’s just been woken up from a nap.

“Yes,” Shimada replies in English. The voice modulator needs work, Angela notes, his voice still tinny. Shimada seems surprised by the sound of his new synthesized voice. “What did you do to me?”

He can talk, and he’s cognizant. Angela smiles. She’ll take whatever small victories she can get. “You’re in the headquarters of Overwatch, the UN peacekeeping agency. I’m Dr. Angela Ziegler, I’m the head of medicine here.”  

Shimada blinks a few times, flexing his new synthetic jaw. “What did you do to me?” he repeats. Clumsily, he raises his left hand in front of his face, horror dawning on his expression. “What did you do to me?” There’s more anger in his voice.

Angela wants to apologize. She knows how this looks, the terror she would feel if she woke up in Shimada’s stead. “Your brother tried to kill you. You were in very bad condition, but we have the best engineers and medics in the world with us, and we were able to save you.” _Save_ is the wrong word. _Salvage_ would be more accurate, really, but Angela can’t say that. It’s too close to admitting that this isn’t ethically right.

“Why?” Shimada awkwardly touches his own face, over the scar tissue that serves as his lips now, something Angela couldn’t find a way around.

Angela avoids the question, gently setting Shimada’s hand back onto the hospital bed. “It’s going to take time for you to fully adjust, and there’s likely adjustments we’ll have to make to the programming so you feel integrated with the synthetic portions of your body. But I’d say within six months you should be able to do everything you used to do.”

“Why?” Shimada asks again, and Angela squirms a little. She looks to Torbjörn, who conveniently is absorbed in reading something on his data pad.

“That’s a better question for Strike-Commander Morrison,” Angela says. She hopes it sounds authoritative enough.

Shimada seems to accept it, relaxing into the pillow on his bed. “Where am I, again?’

Angela lets out a sigh of relief. This is a question she can answer.

* * *

Hanzo’s new body infuriates him.

His reflexes are painfully slow, and his attempts at walking have been nothing short of disastrous. He has taken to snapping gauze between his outer faceplate and his synthetic jaw to hide the torn edges of what was once his lower face, conceal the jagged lines of his mouth. He may not have ever considered himself terribly handsome or been particularly vain, but there is no denying now that he is ugly.

Most painfully, though, is what Hanzo has been denied.

He no longer eats—he has no need for food anymore, and he has no ability to. His entire lower mouth and jaw has been replaced. What nutrition he needs he is given through a port at the base of his neck via injection.

He no longer physically needs sleep—though Ziegler recommends he still rest for eight hours at night, to ease his transition.

Even sensation has been taken from him—Hanzo is only capable of feeling pressure against his synthetic body, no pain or pleasure. Ziegler has been working on transferring the technology from omnic nervous systems to Hanzo’s body, but so far her attempts have all been met with failure, and Hanzo is tired of surgeries that do nothing more than waste his time.

Meditation helps, somewhat, to ease the loss, and Hanzo finds himself meditating more and more frequently. In the physical therapy room, there’s a television that exclusively streams motivational speeches and other ‘positive media’ (or so the therapist says when Hanzo asks), and one of the speakers resonates with Hanzo—an omnic monk from the Shambali named Mondatta.

Mondatta’s speeches are striking, not concerned about motivation or being incessantly cheerful, but rather focusing on embracing life as temporal, as fleeting, as imperfect. Hanzo finds himself focusing on that concept.

He knows he has a debt to pay Overwatch, but Hanzo finds himself thinking of the Shambali often, of what their philosophers would have to say to someone who no longer fit within the conventional boundaries of man and machine if Hanzo were to meet them in their temple.

* * *

It is three agonizingly long months before Ziegler finally deems Hanzo ready for life outside of the medbay.

The quarters in the residential section are little different than his room in the medbay had been, but here the doors lock and there’s no observation window looking out onto the hallway. With his release comes a pittance of a paycheck that Strike-Commander Morrison says will increase once Hanzo is cleared for joining the Overwatch task force.

Hanzo’s first purchase with his paycheck is clothing. He does not need it, strictly speaking—his entire body is a sexless series of interlocking metal plates—but it is a familiar comfort to dress himself. There are a few specialty shops that offer carefully tailored traditional clothing for omnics, designed not to catch or tear in robotic joints, and Hanzo orders half a dozen items in hopes that something will work.

It all fits, and as the site promised, none of it gets caught in his knee joints or his elbows, a problem Hanzo had never imagined he would be faced with. For the first time in a very long time, Hanzo finally feels like himself.

That he is allowed into the practice range to train helps. There are advantages to his new body—his hands never shake or get tired, and his aim has never been steadier. Every challenge that Morrison, Reyes, or Ziegler see fit to give him is met with exceptional performance. The sooner that Hanzo is allowed into the field, the sooner Hanzo’s debts to Overwatch will be paid, and the sooner he is free again.

The first time he tries his hand at summoning the kami again it is in front of Gabrielle Adawe. Morrison does not tell Hanzo what her exact role in Overwatch is, but Hanzo knows it must be incredibly important, if the look at Morrison’s face if anything to go by. He knows he must impress her.

Hitting the bullseye on practice bots will not impress her. Trick shots aimed to show off his skill will not impress her. Hanzo knows that Adawe, like Morrison and Reyes, have heard the stories of the Shimada clan, of the power of the kami. It’s what they have all been waiting for.

Hanzo notches an arrow and draws back. “ _Ry_ _uu_ _ga waga teki wo kurau_ ,” he says, and steels himself. He closes his eyes. If this fails, he is done for.

Yet what is left of his organic skin tingles and though it takes a second longer than Hanzo anticipated, there is the roaring sound of the dragon. He opens his eyes, and there it is: two twin blue dragons, twisting together in one fluid motion. They tear through the training bots, rending them into scrap so thoroughly that their self-repair mechanisms have failed. The dragon fade almost as quickly as they appeared, but that does not matter.

What does matter is that Adawe and Morrison both look genuinely shocked when Hanzo turns to them, bowing.

That Hanzo is promoted to active duty on the task force is anticipated, but that it happens later that same day is surprising.

* * *

In the wake of the explosion that destroys the Overwatch headquarters, Hanzo wastes no time in signing the resignation forms a UN agent gives him.

He is a free man again, his debt to Overwatch paid. Within two hours of his resignation, he is on a plane to Nepal. The Shambali monk, an omnic named Zenyatta, who had briefly visited their base in Switzerland a year ago had promised Hanzo that he would always have a home amongst their ranks, if he desired one. There, Zenyatta promised, omnic and human alike worked together to embrace enlightenment.

There, Zenyatta said, Hanzo might find the peace he had been looking for for so long.

* * *

“Master,” Hanzo whispers, kneeling, his head bowed towards the stone floor. “I have been meditating.”

“And what revelation did you have, my student?” Zenyatta hovers in Lotus position, blue lights on his faceplate twinkling in the darkness of the Shambali temple.

“My past follows me like a dark cloud. I have tried to let go of it, Master, but it will not let go of me.”

“This is about your brother, is it not?” Zenyatta’s orbs whirl around his neck. “Genji Shimada, yes?”

Hanzo nods, still sitting supplicant on the floor. “There are rumors that someone is breaking into the Hanamura shrine on the same day every year to leave an offering. The Shimada-gumi continue to increase the security on the shrine, but every year it is the same.”

“And that same day is the day your brother believes he killed you?” Zenyatta asks.

“Yes,” Hanzo says simply.

“Inner peace cannot come from the forgiveness of an external party,” Zenyatta hums. “I do not believe that this will grant your brother any peace, but I believe it will grant you peace. If this is what you desire, my student, go forth.”

Hanzo nods. “Thank you, Master.”

* * *

The Genji that Hanzo sees at the Hanamura shrine is not the same Genji that begged Hanzo to fight back all those years ago.

This Genji is older. His hair is no longer neon green, and he is now the main enemy of the Shimada-gumi, not their heir apparent. His senses are sharper, and his fighting is better, if the way he easily deflects every arrow Hanzo fires is any indication. He no longer hesitates to fight.

“You think you honor your brother Hanzo with incense and offerings?” Hanzo laughs, notching another arrow from his quiver. “Honor resides in one’s actions.”

Genji throws a shuriken that Hanzo narrowly avoids catching in his shoulder. “You dare to lecture me about honor? You are not worthy to speak his name!” An arrow comes dangerously close to Genji’s ear, whizzing past to hit the solid stone of the building. Genji pulls his sword from its scabbard. “ _Ryuujin no ken wo kurae_!” Genji shouts, green dragon swirling around him as he darts towards Hanzo.

“ _Ryuu ga waga teki wo kurau_!” An arrow whistles past Genji and into a red column, twin blue dragons instantly twining Genji’s dragon between them and taking it with them off into the distance.

Genji collapses onto his knees, sliding his sword back into its sheath. “Only a Shimada can control the dragons,” he murmurs, staring at where Hanzo lurks in the shadows. “Who are you?”

Hanzo notches an arrow and keeps it aimed steadily at Genji’s temple.

“Do it, then,” Genji hisses, expression pained in the same way it had been all those years ago, when he’d been begging for Hanzo to fight back. “Kill me.”

Hanzo quickly slides the arrow back into his quiver. “No. I will not grant you the death you wish for. You still have a purpose in this life, brother.”

“No,” Genji hisses. “My brother is dead.”

Hanzo laughs and leaps to the edge of the balcony.

“Hanzo… What have you become?”

“I have accepted what I am, and I have forgiven you. Now you must forgive yourself.” Hanzo jumps to the top of the fence, its tiled edging giving way beneath his feet. “The world is changing, Genji. It is time to pick a side.”

Genji clenches his fist, shuriken between his knuckles, but he does not throw them. “Real life is not like the stories Father always told us. You are a fool for believing it so!” he yells.

Hanzo shrugs and leaps for the far edge of the next fence. “Perhaps I am a fool to think that there is still hope for you, but I do. Think on that, brother,” Hanzo shouts back, vanishing out of Genji’s line of sight.

It will take Genji some time to understand, Hanzo knows.

But he hopes, selfishly, that it isn’t too long. That Genji can accept that no matter how human or how mechanical Hanzo has become, he was still his brother.

That redemption was possible.

That one day, they could fight together.

Hanzo composes himself. Zenyatta awaits him at the ryokan. Overwatch, as fragile and tenuous as it was in the first days of its rebirth, awaits for him.

Hanzo leaves Shimada castle, and he does not look back.

**Author's Note:**

> It's been months since I read 'Reflections' and I'm still not over the fact that Hanzo's canonical response to his brother coming back from the dead as a cyborg was to go get an undercut and some piercings. 
> 
> I start a desk job soon so the rate at which I've been writing & posting is probably going to change. 
> 
> find me on [tumblr](http://officialclaricestarling.tumblr.com) | play overwatch with me @ clstarling#1290 | talk to me on discord @ claricestarling#4370 (just say you're from ao3 if you wanna talk, I love chatting w/ y'all & I take prompts!) | | [deleted]


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